This is my third year as an Engineering Major at Cornell University, and being in the especially dorky field of Computer Science I’ve tried to balance my education by specializing in English. Too many engineers can’t express themselves in written English, or give a long eloquent speech. Whether or not this is necessary for the workplace is arguable, but whether an excellent command of language is good for one’s soul is axiomatically true. To read Forster or Woodsworth is to come alive in a transcedental sense disjoint from the pleasure of working with machines.

You can look at the issue from a philosophical standpoint, or a practical one. Practically (which is what many engineers are concerned about), command of English and Literature is important from three functional perspectives: innovation & creativity, documentation & presentation, and design & production. I believe that a poet-engineer will have more innovative ideas than a pure engineer, because he has avenues of escape from one realm to the next. While working on a particular problem, his mind can flit between two ideas of knowledge, Lord Byron inspiring a different metal in some alloy, simply by allowing his mind to wander while on the job. The best minds pursue all avenues of innovation, even tangentially. Then, there’s the obvious clarity that skills in English bring to technical documentation. The farther you can abstract your documentation from the harsh technical reality of the machine you’ve built, the easier they are for operators and layman to understand. In a presentational sense, good English means a good resume, which is the key to getting good jobs. How well can you present yourself if you can write the next Google, but can’t speak a fluid sentence? Finally, English, while mystical and lively, is also highly structured and formalized. A full understanding of the grammar of letters and words could help you understand the Car grammar, of nuts and bolts.

Philosophically, well roundedness has been an ideal since Plato first wrote about the immortal soul in the Republic. “Engineering,” he would say, “is good for your mind, but your mind is only one part of the body, spirit, mind consortium. You should exercise all three.” To which we might reply, “And how, sir, should we improve the state of our spirit?” Plato would say, “By the careful study of the Arts you will better your spirit, the creative part in you.” Psychologists might disagree: modern proponents of the liberal education certainly would agree with him. And I think so, too.

To have a truly liberal engineer, you need some part technical studies, and some part liberal. And not just liberal studies, but a passion for the Arts that rivals your passion for engineering.